


The Devil’s Chambers

by Arualiaa



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Deals with unknown forces, Gen, Mild body horror imagery, Monster Voldemort, Pre-Slash If You Squint, Purple prose everywhere, Soldier Harry, Soldier Ron, WWI era, eldritch horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 00:22:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18560137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arualiaa/pseuds/Arualiaa
Summary: Lieutenant Ronald Weasley is tasked with investigating the disappearance of his best friend, brother in law and fellow soldier, Harrison Potter.He will soon learn what kind of dark forces are at play.





	The Devil’s Chambers

Lieutenant Ronald Weasley knew why he had been issued this order. It should have been insulting, really, to send a single man on a nigh-impossible mission.

Retrieve former Lieutenant Potter. Find the circumstances behind his disappearance. Do not return without results.

His superiors knew he would do it, because Harrison Potter just so happened to be his best friend from infancy, and brother in law. He would scour even the deepest pits of Hell to find the man.

An aptly put metaphor, because the cave he was currently looking at certainly did look like it.

The last place Harry had been seen in was a nearby coast village in Scotland, whose inhabitants had warned him against coming here. “Man’s dead, sir,” they’d said. “No one ever comes back from ‘ere.”

It was a dreary place, Ronald had to admit. But he supposed the continued disappearances of people over the years would do that to any cheery old town.

The Devil’s Chambers, they’d called it. And as cliché as the name was, he couldn’t think of a more fitting description.

Several layers of heavy iron gates secured the place, forged by the townsfolk, and yet apparently, someone always managed to worm their way in. Just like he was about to, the ring of keys heavy in his hand.

If he had to disappear in the cavern to find his answers, so be it. He’d be damned if he didn’t find Harry, and he was prepared to die trying.

The metallic screech of the doors dragging against the stone floor seemed to signal Ronald’s doom, as he walked into the cavern’s dark, murky depths.

His gas lantern cast eerie shadows on the walls, which seemed to go from rough, virgin rock to smooth stone. ‘Man made’, he thought, and the craftsmanship was impeccable.

No wonder it was called the Devil’s _Chambers_ , and not his den. He wondered just how many people had walked this far in to witness it and spread the rumour.

Sound echoed ahead, and Ronald steeled himself. He gripped his rifle tight, and marched on.

The sight nearly made him drop the blasted weapon.

Harry was sitting on a wooden chair, almost as if standing guard. His own rifle was by his side, and most of his uniform was discarded on the floor, leaving his trousers and an inner linen shirt.

He didn’t look like he had been in this hellhole for a year. His friend was relatively clean, his chin betrayed the fact that he’d most likely shaved the day before, and he was not malnourished.

Only the bags under his eyes hinted at something else, the very wrongness of the situation. He hadn’t been sleeping well. He looked like he’d aged a decade from stress alone. A scar marred his forehead as if someone had carved it with a knife long ago.

“Harry,” he said, tentatively. “Is that you?”

Panic filled those familiar green eyes, and he snapped at attention.

“Ron, what are you doing here? You have to leave, have you not heard how dangerous this place is?”

“Precisely,” the redhead replied, and his tone turned pleading. “Harry, you have to come home. To your wife. To your children. War is raging across the continent, Ginny got your draft letter months ago… but it doesn’t matter, we can claim you are shell shocked, indisposed for battle, just come home…”

Harry’s face looked grim. “I cannot,” he finally said. “There is a darkness lurking in these halls, and I have appointed myself as its jailor. I was sent to investigate the disappearances, and there haven’t been any since I was gone, have there?”

“What madness has gripped you, my friend?” Ronald said, horrified. “I will not accept a no for an answer. Whatever has your senses trapped in its clutches, you must snap out of it. Think of Ginny! Think of the children!”

“They are safer with me here,” he muttered sullenly, shaking his head. “Along with everyone else. What dwells here must never be released. Ever.”

Ronald decided to entertain the notion, of only for his brother in law’s slipping sanity. “And what, pray tell, is that fiend? What makes you think, my friend, that you alone, a single man, can stop it?”

“You will have to trust me, Ron. Please. You must leave. If you ever cared at all about our friendship, you will lock the doors from the outside, and conceal the entrance with the heaviest rocks you can find-“

Another sound stopped Harry in his tracks, and he looked frantic. A hissing noise, like the tongues of a thousand snakes, echoed from the beyond, and a pair of crimson eyes glowed in the dark, zeroing in on him.

Ronald was gripped by an icy fear he had never experienced before, it squeezed his heart and made it hard to breathe. He was frozen in place, his rifle long discarded on the floor.

Harry’s voice broke him out of his trance. He was pointing his rifle at the fiend, glancing back at him.

“I will hold it back. Run if you value your life, Ronald. Tell the world Harry Potter is dead.”

Still dazed by the fear, he could only nod.

“RUN!”

And he ran, a high, cold laughter getting quieter and quieter behind him.

 

* * *

 

“Harry. You know these bullets cannot harm me.”

The former lieutenant nodded, sighing and dropping the weapon. His posture relaxed, but icy beads of sweat had made its way onto his forehead. Harry wiped it, running a hand through his hair.

“I know. It was for show, he would not have listened otherwise. You froze him in place, you bastard.”

Cruel laughter he had grown accustomed to filled the hallway, and he idly thought that perhaps one day he would understand the creature’s sense of humour.

They had all the time of the world, after all. The deal he had made with the creature intertwined his soul with the fiend’s, gave it an incentive not to harm him.

And Harry was not leaving. Not if his life depended on it.

“How can you be so sure he will not come back with an entire battalion to take you away from me?” The creature asked, and Harry looked at it, fear long gone.

It was a grotesque mixture of a serpent, and what might have once been a man. Its red eyes gleamed with curiosity.

“He will not. You instilled primal fear in him, didn’t you.” It was not a question. “He will be lucky if he manages to report back without stuttering. Hopefully, it will get him out of this war he spoke of.”

The creature hummed, and it sounded like a rattlesnake’s tail flick. “Tell me, Harry. Do you truly believe yourself my jailor? Or my captive?”

Its claws tilted his chin so he’d look at its eyes. Harry stared back impassively.

“Does it truly matter? We will spend the rest of our lives in this prison together, and you shall never kill anyone else again. The rest is semantics,” he said. “You may think of yourself as my captor if it makes you sleep better at night.”

“You never spoke of a wife and children. You left them behind to stay with me? I am _truly_ honoured,” it cooed, in mock awe. “You do know we are immortal, right my Harry? You shall never see them again.”

Harry had accepted that a long time ago. That he would never see his sweet Lily’s face, still unborn by the time he’d left to investigate. He would never see Albus and James grow up into fine young men. He would never wake up next to Ginny and smell her flowery scent.

His death would crush them. But it was for the best. He grinned, vindictively. Perhaps his sanity was truly compromised.

“Then I shall be your jailor for the rest of eternity, Voldemort.”


End file.
